Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [185]
Eventually the ships managed to untangle themselves, and they floated down the river to the sea. “So violent a storm raged there that the fleet would have been shattered to pieces at the mouth of the river.” There was nothing to do but wait, and pray. The outcome vindicated Columbus’s risky decision not to seek refuge at sea, where disaster lurked.
When the skies cleared several days later, he assigned his brother Bartholomew “to settle and conquer the land.” Columbus would give up his search for a strait leading to India in mid-voyage to return to Spain and his Sovereigns. The abruptness of the decision suggested that he was far sicker than anyone—even his son—realized, and he desired above all to return to Spain to recover, or die in the attempt.
CHAPTER 12
Castaways in Paradise
By February 6, Bartholomew was leading a complement of sixty-eight men in rowboats along the coast to the mouth of the Río Veragua, west of the Río Belén, up the river to the Quibián’s village, where they spent a day resting from their labors and inquiring about the way through the jungle to the gold mines. The Quibián obligingly sent guides to show them the route, and within hours of their arrival, the men were collecting gold, many of them for the first time in their lives. That night they returned to their ships, feeling tired, content, and rich.
The men later learned that the promising mines they had visited were not in Veragua, as they had assumed, but in Urirá, a neighboring province at war with Veragua. “The Quibián had guided the Christians there to annoy his enemies,” and, even worse, “in the hope that Christians would go to that country and quit his own,” said Ferdinand. The stately, civil Quibián was capable of more guile than the Europeans realized, and began to plot against them.
As Columbus prepared to return to Spain, his brother the Adelantado undertook yet another expedition in search of gold. With the exception of the sleight of hand concerning the gold mines, the Europeans were treated as ambassadors or honored guests wherever they went rather than as dreaded or reviled conquerors. By February 24, they had ventured so far inland that Bartholomew became concerned; he had wandered too far from the ships, and decided to retrace his route.
Along the way, and almost as an afterthought, so casually did Ferdinand mention it, the Adelantado—Bartholomew Columbus—laid the basis for a new European settlement, the first in the region. Divided into eight groups of ten, the men “set about building houses on the banks of the Río Belén about a lombard shot from its mouth, beyond a gully that comes down to the river, at the foot of which there is a little hill,” Ferdinand recalled. Step by step, building by building, the Spanish empire extended into Central America (not that Veragua was recognized as such at the time). Before long, “ten or twelve houses” emerged in the jungle. They were no match for the sophisticated edifices of the Maya, but they offered proof that the Europeans who fashioned them were there to stay. “Besides these houses, which were of timber and thatched with the leaves of palm trees that grow on the shore, they built a large house for use as a storehouse and arsenal, in which they placed many pieces of ordnance, powder, and foodstuffs.” However, “the necessities of life, such as wine, biscuit, garlic, vinegar, and cheese, being all the Spanish food they had,” were stored aboard La Gallega for maximum security. Columbus intended to leave the ship for